Another story from Byron...

As many of you know, Byron Morgan and I had a company in the film business that was to produce some of his scripts in the late 70's and through the 80's. It was Byron that was responsible for getting me involved in the rescue of the Japanese hostages in 1990 that were being held in Baghdad. The story of that adventure is in an earlier installment here on the blog. I woke up yesterday with John Paisleys' name in the forefront of my mind. This is the story I got from Byron......

Byron went to California to partake in a program which was called Life Spring,  a series of self awareness classes and exercises. In the classes bonds were built between members present and Byron connected with John Paisley as well as several other individuals. Byron explained to Paisley that he was a writer/producer for NASA and Paisley said he worked in D.C. also. They exchanged phone numbers after the event so they could reconnect when they got home. Byron told me that he tried several times at the number Paisley gave him but was consistently told that there was no one there of that name. Byron was perplexed as one of the main points of the Life Spring event was honesty. Byron eventually wrote off  the meeting as "the way it was".

One afternoon Byron received a call with the other end of the line stating that he was John Paisley, and they needed to have lunch. Byron accepted and at the meeting Paisley told him that he was sorry he didn't reconnect but he couldn't because of his job. As far as anyone was concerned he didn't really exist, he worked for the CIA. Because of this and his responsibilities with the organization, he didn't reply to Byron's calls. Paisley went on to say that he had retired and now was free to meet, which they did on several occasions as they both had military backgrounds.

I was talking to Byron one day and this is where the story came from. I had seen in Time Magazine
that a body had been found a few days after a boat washed ashore in the Potomac not far from the Russian Embassy. It was the body of John Paisley and it was reported that he committed suicide. Because the body had been in the river for several days identification was made by dental records.
Byron went to the funeral and noticed three distinct groups attending, Friends, CIA, and a Life Spring group. Byron had a lingering set of questions concerning Paisley's passing. It was ruled a suicide with with a gunshot to the head. Byron thought that IF it was a suicide, Paisley would have burned the boat as part of the sendoff so to speak, and Paisley was shot in the back of the head. A few days after the funeral the Dentist that identified the dental records retracted he assessment. he didn't think the teeth matched Paisleys' records. Byrons'  assessment of the whole thing is that Paisley jumped the fence and joined the other side. Paisley was pretty idealistic according to Byron and may have thought he could have changed the course of history by his actions. We'll never know.`